Bad Idea To Remove Sand From An Established Reef Tank?

[xxBarneyxx]

Having this discussion with someone on another forum and interested in hearing what you guys think.

Basically someone wants to replace the sand in their marine tank. They are using LR filtration method.

The argument that it is not safe is that the sand will contain a large amount of bacteria and removing it all in one go will cause a spike.
The argument that it is safe is that unless you have a massive surface area of sand with good flow over it 90% of your bacteria is going to be in the LR anyway as it offers much better conditions for the bacteria to grow.

I wont say what side I was on as I want an unbiased opinion What do you think?

 

[orange shark]

Id say most of the bacteria would be in the rock anyway so it wouldnt make much difference whether you took the sand out or not

 

[ben1987]

i know of some tank that have their sand changed quite regular to avoid 'old tank syndrome' Sand seeds quite fast iirc. I would imagine that if your running a DSB elsewhere then there would be no problem at all. If not and theres a large amount of sand in the tank then i would maybe help to remove it slowly.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, I've done it, replaced ~80% of my sand with no spike... And as Ben said, plenty of others do it to prevent OTS

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Cool, thats what I was hoping to hear

The only problem I thought they might have was that they could stir up a lot of detris in there so I advised them to put on a filter with lots of wool in to take it out the water column and do a couple of partial water changes after doing it.

 

[ben1987]

yeah that sounds reasonable barney.

 

[SkiFletch]

Yup, it does make a ROYAL mess of the water, so mechanical filtration is a must afterwards